


When You Get Caught Between the Moon and New York City

by AraceliL



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Garrus gets mentioned for a second, Mass Effect 2, Romance, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, really nothing but fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 11:34:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6152368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AraceliL/pseuds/AraceliL
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thane finally tells Shepard what 'siha' means.<br/>Shameless, disgusting fluff. So much. Inexcusable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	When You Get Caught Between the Moon and New York City

**Author's Note:**

> So I was watching a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged and I got the song Arthur's Theme (or Best That You Can Do) stuck in my head thanks to one of the videos. This plot bunny came out of that, and I needed to get it out. Hope you enjoy the sickeningly sweet fluff of the ship I will forever be trash for <3 Also, forgive any spelling errors. I'm tired and just needed to write this down :3

“Fuck.”

By now, Thane was used to his commander’s expletives, to the point where they amused him, -- though he’d never let her know that -- but out of instinct he turned to her, only taking a second to marvel over the fact that only a few weeks of serving under her (or was it a month? A few months? He’d think his eidetic memory would help with that, but around Shepard, time seemed to expand and shrink like the waves) was enough to hone his reflexes to her. It had startled him, at first, to realize he was so in-tune with his boss -- or was he so enraptured? -- but they fit each other like machines, and the resulting mechanism was so smooth, so perfect, he didn’t question it any further. It was simply another of Shepard’s powers, he reasoned, another one of her inexplicable talents to make things  _ work.  _ She drew people to her, like she had her own gravitational pull, flexing and fitting things to her will, much like how her muscles flexed cleanly in her shoulders as she stared down the sights of her gun, eyes hard, sharp, dangerous, and... _ exhilarating. _

As his eyes searched up and down her body for signs of fight or flight, his mind was already drawing up the comparison it’d been mulling over for a few days now, snapping the pieces into place like she was the best, most interesting puzzle it’d ever worked on, and he tried to shunt it away with little progress.

When Shepard didn’t appear tense, sitting with her shoulders hunched in a comically resigned expression, Thane opened his mouth, managing just barely to suppress his smirk at the way her eyes raked up his body. “Are you alright, Shepard?”

If his voice was a little lower than usual, well, no one had to know.

They were sitting alone at the entrance of the Blue Suns base they had just cleaned out, waiting for the shuttle to come retrieve them. It had been an easy mission -- more of a chance to stretch their muscles than anything -- and Shepard has insisted on bringing Thane alone.  _ It would be a waste to bring more than necessary, _ she’d said to Garrus’s suspicious look.  _ Besides, I want some practice on my new sniper _ . She’d nudged Thane’s arm at that, like a conspiratorial partner, and sauntered away before he could begin to comprehend what that had meant. 

Garrus gave him look that said he knew  _ exactly _ what that meant.

It hadn’t been two weeks since she’d saved his son, and the unexpected favor had tossed him into a world of confusion and second-guessing. His main question centered around the word  _ why, _ but the rest of his thoughts just rotated around it like that small animal Shepard kept up in her cabin, running and running on its wheel but never getting anywhere. He had meditated on the thoughts reeling through his head for days, falling easily into the techniques that usual brought him solace, understanding. And they had succeeded -- partly. An epiphany had dawned on him during those meditations: he  _ cared _ for her, much in a way he hadn’t cared about anyone for ten years. And it really was comparable to a dawning: he had his suspicions, like the first rays of the sun peeking over the horizon, but like closing your eyes to avoid being blinded, he had shut his feelings to the idea. She was too  _ different. _ Her skin was soft, not scaled -- how badly he wished to feel it; his meditations had revealed that startling fact as well, along with a few other urges he hadn’t had to meditate away since his adolescent age -- her eyes were blue, like the ocean, and small, framed by a pretty curve of dark  eyelashes -- she had hair! Oh, and she wasn’t dying. That was a pretty important difference, too. 

Still, his heart was stirring in a way that was so unfamiliar it scared him. He was, of course, unable to forget that feeling, but had, for all intents and purposes, put it to rest. Drowning his soul in battle sleep and shunning away all the old parts of his life had kept him alive this far, even if he wasn’t much more than a miserable, sinful shell of a person. He’d been content with it. It  _ worked. _ It brought him to Shepard, though, and suddenly his dull-but-painless battle sleep was shattered. Being tipped off about Kolyat on top of the slowly returning  _ want _ to live, to be alive, had been the catalyst, and he couldn’t keep himself from refusing Shepard the truth when she asked. He couldn’t refuse her anything, it seemed.

Only a few days ago he had explained to her what he was feeling, and she had looked at him with an expression he had never seen before in her ocean eyes. She’d joined their hands, and her words were, of course, still in his mind: “I guess we’ll have to figure it out.” Her eyes shone like the moon.

But now, they were sitting next to each other, just far enough away to be professional, and Shepard was hunched over awkwardly, still grumbling under her breath, struggling with something over her shoulder. The light on the small planet was fading fast around them, the triple moons throwing bright white beams onto her black hair, shining silver as it gently brushed her cheek. She’d removed part of her armor once they’d reached the meeting point, claiming she was warm (Thane was comfortable, of course, and when he mentioned it she’d sent a retort of “cold-blooded” his way, laughing at his smug look), and the beads of sweat on her neck were proof enough. How unfortunate that they drew Thane’s eyes the way they did, and his teeth trapped his tongue with the effort not to lick them away, taste her skin, so different, so soft, so willing under his mouth…

“Ugh, I got my hair caught in my zipper,” Shepard was saying, startling Thane out of his inappropriate thoughts. He blinked both sets of lids in a futile attempt to force his blood to cooperate, then met her eyes with what he hoped was a straight face.

“I see. Allow me to help you.” He moved closer to her, wondering if the blood pounding in his ears was as loud to her as it was to him. No, of course not -- humans had terrible hearing. Or, at least, he tried to reassure himself as one hand rested gently on her shoulder, and the other in the offending hair.

“If you’re mocking me, Krios, I swear to all your gods…”

He was not ready for how soft her hair was, or the gasp that was inadvertently drawn from his lips, making her words fade away as she snuck a glance at him. 

“Thane? You okay?” She worriedly put a hand on his arm ( _ goddamn he was so  _ toned  _ under that leather _ ), only to see his eyes blink quickly, realizing she had pulled him out of a memory. “What is it?” she asked as his gaze refocused on her, fighting the urge rest her hand on his cheek (what did those red frills feel like?), satisfying it slightly instead by stroking his arm reassuringly. 

He still looked shocked, but his eyes regained their shrewdness, his gaze piercing into hers. They were so close, his scent was almost overwhelming; leather, spice, and rainy earth, and his lips were parted slightly, warm, sweet-smelling breath washing over her face. ( _ Even his breath seems delicious. How the fuck is that fair. _ ) 

“I...apologize.” He looked away, as though searching for words, and even while she mourned the lack of his gaze she realized the hand still wound in her hair was trembling. “I have never...felt a human’s hair before, and the texture sparked a memory.” 

The admission surprised her. “Never? But you’ve killed humans!” she blurted, wanting to slap her hand over her mouth as soon as the words were out. Thankfully, though, he didn’t seem to be offended, and she was even rewarded with a small tug on his lips and his beautiful eyes returning to hers. 

“You’re correct, of course. At the time, however, it was hardly something I paused to dwell upon. I never contemplated it until now.” His voice was low, quiet in the falling of the night, the moons making his eyes look huge and glassy, like obsidian orbs. She could see the deep jade of his irises, and struggled to control the pulsing of her heart, but his voice was like a drug, winding through her veins to string her out until her nerves were frayed, looping through her brain until she was sure she had every syllable memorized. 

“Now, how do I free your hair?” Thane asked with a slight chuckle. Shepard cursed her clumsiness as she directed his nimble hands to the zipper, explaining how to hold her hair to avoid pulling it. 

_ Gentle  _ seemed too harsh of a word to describe how carefully he handled the pulled hair, his touch lighter than the wind; for a second she wondered if he had withdrawn his hand, but then she felt the zipper on her back slowly descend and had to remind herself to breathe as the tan expanse of her back was slowly exposed to those inscrutable eyes.  _ Damn it, Zelda, get your mind out of your sex fantasy -- he’s helping you because you’re embarrassingly clumsy, not stripping you down. As much as I want him too. _

Thane, for his part, didn’t stutter, but only because he was pouring all of his willpower into focusing on untangling her hair. The moment passed, he could breathe again, and soon the astoundingly soft strands were free of the metal teeth, and he was chastely returning the zipper to normal. 

“Thank you,” she said quietly, watching him as he pulled away, repositioning himself at her side. Her tongue felt oddly wet in her mouth, and her nerves felt electric; the space that he had just occupied now felt cold and barren next to her, despite the warm night. She tried to busy herself with combing through her newly-freed locks, but she couldn’t help but notice as his eyes followed the movements, again feeling hyper-aware of every glance. 

“You’re welcome,” he said simply, willing himself to look away from the dexterous little fingers wriggling through her mass of long black hair, unfused as they were. His gaze refused to cooperate, though, attracted to her nimble hands like they had their own gravitational field -- much like her own. 

“You really are like the moon,” he told her abruptly, startling her out of her electric haze. His eyes were still on her hands, even as they slowed to a stop from where she’d been preparing a braid.

“What?” was all she could think to say, despite how dumb it sounded coming out of her mouth, so solid and vapid compared to the voice that turned words to poetry. 

But his smile could turn stone to life, she was convinced of it as he met her confused look. It did stupid things to her heart, stupid, childish things, and -- god save her -- made her stomach feel like it was full of butterflies, like tiny little wings were fluttering through her abdominal cavity and tickling her insides, except it wasn’t gross but did make her feel sort of ticklish and like she might suddenly be able to fly at any moment.  _ God help me. _

“You are comparable to many things, siha, but the job should surely be reserved for those more talented than me,” he began, eyes flickering between her hands (still halfway in the long forgotten braid) and her eyes, which were looking at him with something akin to excitement. Taking the expression on good faith, he moved closer to her. “I didn’t see it until recently, it seems.”

“You still haven’t told me what siha means,” Shepard breathed, her world falling back into that electric haze, until he eclipsed one of the moons behind her and suddenly his hand was unweaving hers from her hair, and then his fingers were threaded through the strands instead ( _ thank god it had been a relatively unbloody mission _ ) and all she could was smile dumbly at the contact. 

He just smiled back, making her heart do that stupid thing again, and the way he glanced quickly -- nervously? -- at her lips, then to his hand in her hair, made her sure that if she jumped right now, she would actually be able to achieve escape velocity. 

“Is that what it means? Moon?” she heard herself ask, despite about 90% of her focus actually being trained on the warmth of his legs pressed against hers, her shoulder brushing his chest as he moved closer still.

He made a distracted noise, eyes memorizing the jagged line his fingers were drawing in her hair. 

He was touching a cloud, he was sure of it; there was no other creature in this galaxy that had any part this soft on them. He was scaled, cold, rough even by drell standards (Irikah had always enjoyed rubbing him with her skin creams, though, so he’d never minded, in the end), turians were plates and angles, krogan were basically lumbering rocks, and even salarians he would hesitate to call  _ delicate. _ No, humans were soft, and he’d paid no notice to it in his years, settling comfortably into the general galactic view of the new species, which lay somewhere between intimidated and superior. It could be hard to take them seriously, skin soft enough to rip through underneath layers and layers of armor evolution hadn’t provided, some thought, and he hadn’t countered otherwise.

Until he met Shepard, of course.

No,  _ siha _ did not stand for the moon, but it might as well. Let it stand for all the moons, all the suns, all the stars and lights in the galaxy, things that seem delicate and gentle but have a very real weight, a power, an undeniable and proven gravitational field that draw things towards them without expending any effort of their own. And he was caught. Oh, was he caught.

She was the moon and he was the waves writhing and rolling under her influence; she was the sun and he was the body of the solar system, dancing, revolving around her until she was gone, burned out, because only then would there nothing for him, and only then would he be free of the spell she had on him. 

He should have been surprised, he knew, of the depth of his feelings for her -- but he couldn’t find it in himself to be. It was though all of his emotions had been replaced with a bright, tugging warmth, and when he finally pulled his gaze away from the sunbeams in his hand and met her eyes again, it was like a homecoming he hadn’t felt in -- in ten years.

“No,” he finally managed, still a little overwhelmed with the smothering calm he was feeling in his gut, the burning sense of  _ right _ . One finger twisted a silky strand around another, feeling the smoothness between his fingertips. “But it might as well.”

Shepard had no idea what was going on behind his eyes, but she couldn’t expend enough energy away from gawking at his handsomeness to try and decipher him. Thane would surely tell her, if he wanted to, and she would be delighted to hear; his words were a nectar she craved, his intellect and voice the hook and sinker on the honeypot. She wasn’t even sure what he’d said, to be honest -- his hand was still stroking her hair, causing the most relaxing, tickling tingles on her scalp, and his other was now daring to run one knuckle along the side of her face. 

“What do you mean?” Her voice was barely a breath as the last rays of the sun slipped below the horizon. His lips looked so good, the want to taste them nearly broke her, the fingers in his jacket gripping so tightly the leather protested with a squeak.  _ When did my hand get there? _ One squeeze of her other hand told her it had somehow snuck its way over to his chest, and that explained why she could feel her heartbeat in her palm. 

_ Three-chambered heart, _ her mind supplied dumbly in Mordin’s voice, because it was useful like that.

The knuckle on her cheekbone turned to downy fingertips, and he gave an airy chuckle -- at her question or at himself, she didn’t know -- and for the first time since she’d known him, he looked relaxed. His brow was clear, eyes bright, and those sinfully full lips were pulled in an easy smile, lines of worry, age, old, haunting memories smoothed off his face -- he looked  _ alive,  _ young and energetic in the moonlight, and the feeling of pure  _ adoration _ that enveloped her surprised her in its strength. 

“A warrior-angel of the goddess Arashu,” he murmured, but she was too busy memorizing the random spattering of tiny, dark scales along his face like freckles. They glinted against the moons, winking like individual little stars sprinkled along his skin. “Fierce in wrath. A tenacious protector.”

His hand slid down her jaw, tipped her chin, and she could no longer deny the shivers trickling down her back, the heavy breath from her straining lungs, then the pulse in her ears thrummed down her spine, branched along her belly, between her legs and pooled in the dip of her knees and heels, and she closed the gap between them because goddammit it, Thane, I think I --

She tasted like words that shouldn’t describe a person, but they did, because as her lips moved gently along his, warm, soft, pliable, a dream, a memory both made and in the making, the only thing that came to mind was music, or the moonlight around them. Her lips were like a sea lilly, like caressing the ocean, sweet and natural and slightly salty. It was like holding a poem, flowery and ethereal and he was unworthy to be kissing a goddess, nothing but a pilgrim to a saint, but she was taking the sin from his lips to make him blessed once more.

She wasn’t sure if it was his venom, if she was hallucinating, the hyper-aware state of her senses, or a combination of the three, but she was pretty sure this was the quickest she’d ever been seduced. Yet his mouth was sweet against her, kisses loving and gentle, if a little heady; and she had a suspicion that was why.  He tasted like rain and autumn and the throbbing in her sex abruptly reminded her she needed to stop, or she was going to take him here, surrounded by dead mercs. Oh, it had to be his venom -- it was slipping into her veins, winding through her like coils of heat, the poison that was his voice, his scent, his breath, the tongue delicious and hot in her mouth.

She gasped at that, unable to stop her voice anymore than she could stop her lips from begging for his again as he pulled away at the noise. It was over too soon, and both of them were left panting, flushed, noses still pressed against each other. The moment hung there, uncertain, the press of the other’s lips still imprinted on each other. 

“That’s not like a moon,” she said, the weight of his nickname finally sinking in. He glanced up, and she was surprised at the vulnerability in his gaze. At the questioning look, she just smiled, pressing her forehead to his in what she hoped was a universal gesture of intimacy. She nuzzled a little bit just to be safe.

“A warrior-angel? A protector? That’s not like a moon,” she elaborated, and Thane smiled easily back at her, that sparkling heat in his gut glowing with warmth. 

“No, it’s not,” he agreed, tracing one finger over the lips rosy from his. The thought made him stupidly proud, and he shook it away. His reasoning was lost as he made to kiss her again, distracted by the heat of her body against his.

She was going to protest, to demand an explanation in a way so typical of her he couldn’t help but chuckle in fondness, but the sound of the shuttle approaching stopped them both. They both sighed, pulling away from each other, and briefly Thane wondered how this would effect them on the ship. He understood, of course, that Shepard would probably want to keep it private, based the fact that Cerberus still had their claws dug in deep, not to mention scuttlebutt and all the headaches that came with it. He easily composed himself as he helped Shepard gather up the rest of their materials, careful not to let his hand linger too long over hers as the shuttle landed, even if his mind was already replaying and lingering for far longer than was appropriate. 

So when he was startled out of his reverie by a hand slipping into his, he couldn’t help the smile that spread along his face. In a quiet voice, he turned to her, enjoying how her pulse jumped under her neck as he spoke in the dim light of the cabin. “Siha, I understand if you want to keep our relationship private. Cerberus can be quite...convincing.”

Her smile beamed, and he was certain of it; she was the moon, and there was no fighting her pull, had he ever wanted to. He was caught in her tide, and there was no place he’d rather be.

“I don’t give a fuck.” 

Ah, Thane loved his commander’s expletives. 


End file.
